Trust Me - this new hammy horror from the BBC should be a hit

These days, it’s hard to tell the real from the fake, the reality from the fantasy. Everyone seems to have their own version of the truth.

In the BBC’s new drama series Trust Me (BBC1, Mondays, 9pm), this blurring of the line between the real and the unreal lends a certain air of sweaty paranoia to its tale of a paralysed soldier plagued by notions of dodgy goings-on in the hospital where he’s being treated.

While the first series of Trust Me – focusing on Jodie Whitaker’s nurse masquerading as a doctor – was a fairly straightforward affair, this one has taken a turn into haunted house territory.

The ward where wounded squaddie Jamie (Alfred Enoch) is being treated is a cavernous affair, where clearly the NHS trust is saving money by turning off as many lights as possible – leaving lots of dark corners for people to lurk.

The weird thing, however, is that there is a glass lift slap bang in the middle of the ward, meaning Jamie – trapped in his bed – can see all those secret conversations between the medical staff, fuelling his paranoia that someone is killing the patients.

The Gothic atmosphere is helped along nicely by the towering Victorian hospital building and John Hannah’s enjoyable hammy turn as the hospital consultant who may – or may not –be up to mischief.

The whole thing leaves you unsure whether Jamie – plagued by nightmares of his time in Afghanistan – is really in danger, or whether it’s all just a figment of his imagination, not helped by the oddly-stern nurses, who seem more addled by drugs than the patients.

The first two episodes turn the Gothic screw and if the series doesn’t end in a welter of blood and cackling, then I shall be very disappointed. And that’s the truth.

Lancashire-set drama The Bay (ITV, Wednesdays, 9pm) ended this week, and after a promising start, it faded by the end. However, all the bits fitted together nicely and a second series would be interesting.

There’s been much talk about the epidemic of knife crime, but watching 999: What’s Your Emergency (Channel 4, Mondays, 9pm) showed that while we wring our hands, the police are struggling.